My Nuclear Dream

There’s a house with a white picket fence, luscious green grass, a soft yellow paint with a sterile white trim. Two paths to the backyard, one stopping at the patio that rests quietly under the second floor master bedroom, the other with a moral toll booth with a sign that says “Beware! Questions Roaming in the Backyard!” It’s a very inviting house, quaint on the outside and welcoming on the inside, or so I believe in this Carbon Footprint.

Let’s stroll around to the back instead.

Past the flower bed of chrysanthemum hopes and lavender dreams, through the gated but not guarded pathway to the yard that is only seen by a few, we have the communal cooking station that has been interrogated and grilled — every summer brought the desired warmth to congregate with others with offerings of food and inebriation. This is the winter though, so let’s continue on. To the left is a shed of tools, none that work well together but individually serve their purpose well; branded corporate America. To the right, we have the vines that are suffocating the posts we put up to prevent intrusion into our private lives. But that is not why we’re here. We are standing in this spot to look down, glean into the possible future and the prevention of loss; the underground shelter. We are stepping into the safest, and literally overlooked part of this private social center. Nobody knows it’s there, they walk over it and around it, it is shown off as THE place to be in case of an emergency, in case of human intervention.

“We didn’t want help!” or so they will say.

This fortress of internalized solitude, den of protective avoidance –from destructive and explosive vitriol; somehow disregarded, missed in some way. People just don’t like to look down, I guess. Without ever going inside, there is no way to tell how one can protect their self from the hypothetical dangers that may or may not exist. Yes, it’s very redundant, but isn’t worrying about the possibility of nothing the same thing? One could argue, “Well, it’s dangerous out there” and while that’s not incorrect, it is easy to contend that neglecting what’s inside is far more dangerous. If nobody stocked the shelter, filled it with everything from nourishment to caring items of health, what good does it do? What purpose does it serve? Does it suddenly lose value for helping to survive the quantum levels of fallout? It should be said that it is hardly ever the initial shock, blast or pain that does the most damage, it is the lasting effects that make it hard to survive. To suppose that by making the shelter more visible, instead of hidden and underground, that it wouldn’t be neglected would definitely be the unguided advice from those who have never survived, recovered from the aftermath — never grown from the barren, never had to start over. Never once did it’s existence need to be validated, verified or explained; it’s purpose was assumed, clear and without question. That’s where things get a little funny.

The shelter was built to protect, to ensure the survival of all that we hold precious. The lives that it would encase, the memories it would prevent the destruction of — the preservation of a life I may not want afterwards. What an awful paradox that this shelter represents. How we can spend all of our time outside of this underground box, but in order to save what we hold dear, we hide in the box. That’s why there’s a line imprinted just outside the box, a moat of sorts…I suppose. Sometimes, it’s there to keep what’s inside safe, sometimes it’s the keeps the outside safe from what’s inside. A box disguised as hope, safety and shelter from a storm one cannot predict or even fathom; a heat so hot it will cause a winter. This was built due to the belief that a nightmare was on the horizon, it was stocked with the understanding I may need food for thought while trapped in this box, waiting for the storm to pass. I’ve confined myself, having been told that staying in the box was my only protection from an impending doom involving a past I’d want to leave behind and a future as barren as soul has become in believing that the end is the only thing that matters. Dreamliners will crash, power will fade and hope will only remain as a concept, not a reality. Grim, no?

They are all concepts. Reality is built on what is not real. Touch is the rejection of energy followed by an impulse. Power is energy in a particular moment and energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is the Nuclear Dream. An idea doomed to the recesses of obscurity and irrelevancy because the time of living in a box has passed.